At the station the young people were gathered, chatting gaily, but Sister was unusually quiet. They loaded us down with fruit and flowers and absurd advice--a merry noisy party as the train came thundering in; merry and noisy except for the few who were pale and silent with something wretchedly painful tugging at our hearts and rising in our throats. Hurried kisses and hearty handclasps to the girls and boys, and then--my sister! We had not thought it would be so hard. It was like tearing one’s body apart. Never till that moment had we realized what we were to each other. We had never been separated more than a week in our lives, and here was this train ready to bear me away from home, away from my precious sister, into a life in which she was to have no part! The agony as they separated us (for we clung in desperation as the men shouted “All aboard!”) was the most cruel thing that had then come into my life. When at Syracuse, after putting us on the sleeper, Father left us, another pang was added; the last link was snapped. I can see him now trying to look cheerful as he waved to us from the platform; and I trying to keep the tears back till the train should bear us from his sight. Never a word of all the anxiety and misgiving he and Mother must have felt! The train moved off bearing the two girls with aching throats and tear-stained faces--two girls who had never left the home shelter, bearing them rapidly away in the darkness to the unknown city to begin the study of medicine. Soon reacting from the sadness of parting, after the lumps had left our throats, we became excited, even gay. Everyone had advised us what to do on a sleeper; had warned us about thieves; told us of queer amusing things which happened to inexperienced travellers, and we were fairly spoiling for an adventure of some sort. But as our fellow-passengers seemed strangely indifferent to us, we began to feel it was going to be quite uneventful. Still, though detecting no one who looked like a thief or a cut-throat, we hid our purses and watches with care, and I kept my hat-pin within easy reach, in case any one should molest us. We found some difficulty in fastening the curtains of our bed; there were great gaps between the fastenings; men passing down the narrow aisles would drag the curtains aside. It was a novel and not at all reassuring experience--we girls cooped up on that narrow bed, undressing in the dark stuffy place, right in the sound of men’s voices, with men continually passing. It seemed then, and to this day it seems, a kind of indelicate thing to disrobe in the proximity of a carful of strange men, with only insecure draperies to insure privacy.